Zemblanity, the Opposite of Serendipity

For awhile now I've been fascinated with the idea of serendipity. I was actually going to write a book on the topic but had to shelve it when we started Percolate. (A choice I'm very happy with, as tech industry > book industry.) Anyway, the core idea of the book was going to be that serendipity is something you can both encourage and design for. Because of that I read anything I see that talks about serendipity and was pleasantly surprised by this post on Medium by Stef Lewandowski on the subject. I'll let you read it yourself, he hits on a lot of the things I've been thinking about, but wanted to share a word he introduced me to: "Zemblanity." As he explains, "Zemblanity, a word coined by William Boyd in his book Armadillo in the 1980s, is the polar opposite of serendipity." He goes on to quote the book for the full definition:

So what is the opposite of Serendip, a southern land of spice and warmth, lush greenery and hummingbirds, seawashed, sunbasted? Think of another world in the far north, barren, icebound, cold, a world of flint and stone. Call it Zembla. Ergo: zemblanity, the opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design.

I've definitely found myself in zemblanity at times and I usually have to read my way out. It's nice to have a word to use in case it happens again in the future.